Busy, busy, busy

Wow. There is so much going on right now. We had a great Thanksgiving. My dad and stepmother came up from Pensacola. We had a lot of fun with them.

Also, we're finally moving. We will close on a new house in Knoxville on Wednesday of this week. The movers will arrive Thursday morning with all of our stuff - Happy day! We also sold our house in Memphis! What a blessing!

Also, our church is getting ready to present our Living Christmas Tree. I'll be directing it for the first time. It's going to be a lot of fun! You can check out more info here.
I realized again this year how blessed I am. I have a beautiful, healthy family that loves me in spite of myself. I love my job. I have great friends and a great church. God is good (I'm also thankful that His goodness doesn't depend on me having any of those things).


This is a picture of my 2 favorite people a couple of weeks ago at our house. Aren't they cute!

Waiting

It seems like every time I begin to write I feel the need to apologize for how long it's been since last time I posted something here. So, I'll go ahead and get it out of the way. I'm sorry. I'm a terrible blogger. I've been so busy since we moved to Knoxville.

Last week our choir and orchestra made a trip to Louisville, KY to do a concert at the National Quartet Convention. I ususally don't consider myself a huge southern gospel fan (although I can appreciate anything that's done well and in the right spirit), but I had a really good time. We sang with The Talley Trio, Phil Cross and the Poet Voices, The Kingdomheirs, and Larnelle Harris. It was a great time. It also gave us a chance to bond with some of the choir and orchestra members. You can see some of the pictures here. After you enter the site choose photos and find "Celebrate with Sevier Heights Choir and Orchestra".

Right now we're in Memphis. We came to check on the house (which we're not so patiently waiting to sell) and to get some fall clothes and beach supplies - that's right, we're getting ready to go to the beach. I'm going to an executive staff retreat Monday-Wednesday of next week in Pigeon Forge the coming back to work for 2 days. Then after church on Sunday night, we're loading up the car and heading south! This is our annual family gathering near Destin, FL. It's the highlight of the year for me - can't wait!!!!

Those of you who know me well know that patience isn't one of my greatest strengths. I guess I really don't know very many truly patient people though. That's what we're working on - waiting on God's timing for the sale of our house in Memphis. As you pray for our house to sell, please also pray that we will be patient and trust God's perfect timing in this situation. Have a great weekend!

Trusting Him,
Jon

Settling In

Well, We've sort of made the move and are started to get settled in Knoxville. It has been a wild few weeks though. I'm in the middle of my second week of work and starting to feel a little more like I'm going to survive. It's been like drinking from a fire hose so far. Angie, Jackson, and Lucy made a trip to Memphis yesterday to pick up some more stuff. We only came with the essentials last week. We're going to leave most everything in Memphis until our house sells. I really miss them and will be glad when they come back. It's amazing how much you miss all the noise that comes along with a 3 year old boy when it's not there for a few days. Angie bought a picture to hang in Jack's room the other day that says:

"Boy (n) - a noise with dirt on it."

It's so true, isn't it. I know it is at our house.

Jackson's doing well with the change. There's a park around the corner from where we're living. It has a stream, 2 playgrounds, and lots of walking tracks and grass and trees. We've been walking over there almost every evening and playing. He likes to throw rocks, sticks, big acorns, etc. in the water.

The people at our new church have really made us feel welcome. Our first Sunday was a lot of fun. We sang an awesome song called "Lord, You're Holy" that really blessed me. I think this is going to be a great place to serve! We're so excited to see what God is going to do. Have a great week everyone.

Favorite Things

Today Jackson and I met Angie at Sonic for an afternoon ice cream treat (It was like 4,000 degrees here today). That's one of my very favorite things. Jackson gave me a Sonic gift card for Father's Day. Instead of let's go to Sonic, he says "Let's go to California"... I'm not really sure why. When we're at "California" Jackson always climbs up to the front seat and we all sit together to eat our ice cream.

Another one of my favorite things is on Sunday nights when we come home from church. We all 3 get our pajamas on and lay in Angie's and my bed together and watch the Animal Planet.

Another one of my favortie things is breakfast time. We are one of the weird families that actually sits down and has breakfast together everyday... I know, it's like unheard of. I love it...

It's the little things that keep us going sometimes.

Last Week at Work

Well, it's been kind of a sad week... Actually when I think about it, it's been a really sad week. Yesterday was my last day in the office at Bellevue and today Angie, Jackson, and I went to clean out all of my stuff. I'm excited about the work that I'm going to do, but I'm going to really miss the people I work with here in Memphis. OK, enough of that.

Jackson just told me to write about the zoo. So, even though we will miss the Memphis Zoo very much, we've found the website about the Knoxville Zoo and it looks pretty cool too. They have 2 lions... a mommy lion and a daddy lion with round and round hair (as Jackson calls him). Here's one of my favorite pictures of Jackson at the zoo. You can't even see any animals but I think it's a cute picture. He just had to wear this hat that day.



Pretty cute huh.

I realized that I haven't written about our trip to Nicaragua yet. I don't have time to write all I want to now. I'm posting a couple of pics from our sight-seeing day though. These are of the volcano in Maysaya.




It was my first visit to an active volcano... kinda weird. Anyway, that's enough for now. We're going to dinner with some good friends tonight. Looking forward to that! Have a great weekend and a great day in worship on Sunday!